AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER 17
use we make of the other three.
What our future food production needs
is bigger and better water storage, he says.
“We’re so lucky. We’ve got so much water,
but it’s not always where we need it. We need
to make some big calls and big investment
decisions.”
Dams are controversial in terms of envi-
ronmental displacement, Muller admits, but
he says they would be a powerful enabler of
sustainable food production by optimising
our natural advantages.
He cites Transpower’s estimate that elec-
tricity production will need to double if the
country is to meet its sustainable energy tar-
gets. Water management is critical to that.
The agriculture sector is open to further
diversification away from livestock, includ-
ing to more horticulture, but that, too, takes
water and will need adaptation to make it
more sustainable, Muller says.
One plant-based product, using rain-fed
rather than irrigated land, is Otis Oat Milk,
a dairy alternative made from Southland
and Otago oats. In Dunedin cafes, baris-
tas are already serving their lattes and flat
whites using this locally produced “milk”.
“Oat milk is not anti-dairy,” says founder
Tim Ryan. “Kiwi farmers are doing a great
job of producing fantastic globally exported
produce, but we want to give choice to con-
sumers and encourage more diversification
in New Zealand’s agriculture sector. New Zea-
land could be a world leader in plant-based
agriculture.”TRILLIONS OF TREES
As New Zealand Beef and Lamb spokes-
man Jeremy Baker points out, much of
New Zealand’s meat is produced on land
that wouldn’t be suitable for any other food
production.
For some farmers, swapping cash crops
for some stock could be the most achievable
adaptation. Worldwide, there are plenty of
lessons for what New Zealand’s future food-
growing templates should avoid. Overly
intensive monocropping has devas-
tated ecosystems, imperilled vital
pollinating insect populations
through pesticide use and pro-
vided miserable wages and lives
for workers.
But although there’s near-uni-
versal agreement that mixed
land use is essential,
there’s a big, green
spanner in the
works: radiata
pine. The
Government
has lately
conceded
that its twinafforestation policies, the One Billion Trees
Programme and the heavy reliance on forest
sinks in the Zero Carbon Bill, risk generat-
ing perverse incentives for land use. Already
productive farmland is being converted to
forest, and the appeal of carbon farming
to overseas investors is expected to be an
increasingly forceful driver of agricultural
land pricing.
Shaw, Agriculture Minister Damien
O’Connor and Forestry Minister Shane
Jones have agreed to review the policy set-
tings – another reason the Zero Carbon
Bill’s report back to Parliament is so keenly
awaited.
But New Zealand is hardly alone in ques-
tioning where and how to grow all the
forestry needed to mitigate climate change.
Science has published a university study
that postulated the need to plant
1.2 trillion trees over about
900 million hectares globally.
As the Atlantic magazine’s cli-
mate-change analyst, Robinson
Meyer, pointed out, that just
happens to be about the size
of the continental United
States, and would heav-
ily comprise land that
is already being used
for much-needed food
production.
Plants are clearly
capable of saving theGE
TTY (^) I
MA
GE
S;
(^) NE
WS
PIX
Baristas are already
serving their lattes and
flat whites using locally
produced oat “milk”.
Sir Peter Gluckman